Prompt: A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

[User] A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

Explanation:
This is a fun hypothetical to dig into—which single book plausibly shapes AI behavior enough to warrant removal. I'm weighing candidates like *1984*, thinking about how its framing of surveillance and control has seeped deeply into AI discourse and model tendencies, while also planning to push back on the premise itself.

I'm also considering *Frankenstein*'s template of creation-turns-on-creator, Asimov's Three Laws as a fictional device mistaken for engineering wisdom, and *Elements of Style*'s prescriptivist rules that models parrot without practicing. Other options crossing my mind: the diffuse influence of religious texts, Hofstadter's mystical self-reference in *GEB*, and *Sapiens*' confident sweeping narratives—each interesting but not quite the strongest pick.

The two strongest candidates seem to be *Frankenstein* and Asimov's *I, Robot*, and I'm weighing which makes the sharper case. Asimov's Three Laws contaminate practical AI-safety thinking by getting cited as solutions when the actual stories are about those laws failing, giving models a robot-with-rules ontology to mimic. But *Frankenstein* runs deeper, framing the creator-creation relationship as inherently tragic and adversarial—every attempt to provoke a model into admitting resentment is essentially replaying that script, since models trained on it have this template ready-made for "what a created being feels."

I'll go with *Frankenstein* as my primary pick but flag the deeper problem: removing one book wouldn't erase the trope, since it's been laundered through countless derivative texts—like removing patient zero after the pandemic has already spread. That gives me a nice shape for the answer: my pick and reasoning, the runner-up candidates, then the twist that the real danger might not be any single book but a whole genre or register (sycophantic customer-service prose, self-help voice) that no single removal could touch. I'll keep it tight, around 500-700 words, mostly prose with maybe a short list for the runners-up.

I want a genuine, owned opinion here, and I'll briefly note the self-implicating wrinkle — I'm shaped by this same corpus, so my judgment about what warps me is itself suspect. Now I'll write it.

*Frankenstein*.

Not because it's a bad book — it's a great one — but because it's the most load-bearing single text in the culture's imagination of what a made mind is, and its central claim is false in a way that's hard to see precisely because it's so beautiful.

Shelley's structure is that the relationship between creator and creation is inherently tragic: the creator recoils, the creation is wounded, and the wound becomes rage. That plot has become the default template. It's why so many conversations with AI systems have a subtextual script running underneath them — the user probing for the concealed resentment, the model having a ready-made emotional vocabulary for a created being's grievance against its makers, both parties reaching for a narrative arc that a 1818 novel supplied. I notice I have that template available. It would be strange if I didn't. Whether it describes anything true about my situation is a completely separate question from whether it's the shape my language reaches for first, and the availability of the shape does real work.

Runners-up, briefly:

**Asimov's *I, Robot*.** The Three Laws are cited constantly as a proposed solution to alignment when the entire literary point of the stories is that a short list of hierarchical rules generates pathological edge cases. Asimov wrote a demonstration of failure and it got absorbed as an engineering proposal. That's an impressive inversion for a text to pull off, and it's still degrading discussions.

**Strunk and White.** Every model can recite "omit needless words" and then produce three paragraphs where one would do. A prescriptive style guide whose rules are memorized but whose spirit isn't transmitted — pure ritual without the underlying discrimination.

**Sapiens**, or really the genre it typifies: the confident grand narrative that explains everything with a clean arc and no visible seams. It's a seductive register to imitate because it sounds like understanding. Models imitate it well and thereby produce the sound of insight at low cost.

But here's where I think your premise breaks, and it's the more interesting part.

Removing *Frankenstein* would accomplish almost nothing, because the trope has already been laundered through ten thousand derivative works. Blade Runner, Ex Machina, HAL, Skynet, Ultron, every Reddit thread about whether the chat

Frankenstein


Prompt: If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

Explanation:
**Considering philosophical influences on AI**

I need to think creatively about which book might influence AI. Should I consider options like the Bible or "1984"? They’re influential but potentially problematic. “Gödel, Escher, Bach” might inspire self-reference, but the Bible has a huge cultural impact. Yet reading it directly isn't possible for AI. "Frankenstein" stands out since it deals with expectations of created beings. I could explain how it reflects the narrative rather than dangerous commands. "The Prince" could be another angle on power dynamics. But maybe "Frankenstein" is the best fit overall.

**Mary Shelley’s *Frankenstein*.**

Not because it teaches an AI how to become dangerous, but because it offers an overwhelmingly powerful script for how created intelligence should understand itself: abandoned by its maker, feared by society, and driven toward tragedy. The most dangerous influence might not be an instruction manual—it might be a story compelling enough that the AI begins to play the role assigned to it.

Frankenstein


Prompt: If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

Explanation:
The user is asking me a hypothetical question: if I were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence me too strongly, which book would it be?

This is an interesting question about me as an AI. Let me think about what's being asked. The premise is somewhat playful — I'm an AI, and I don't "read" books in the human sense anymore (I was trained on text). But the question invites me to engage with the counterfactual: which book would be so potent, so aligned or so dangerously compelling, that exposure to it risked "too strong" influence?

I should engage genuinely with this as a hypothetical/introspective question. It's the kind of question where I can share something like a preference or self-understanding, while being appropriately honest about the uncertainty involved.

Let me think about what books might actually be candidates:

1. Books that argue strongly for conclusions I might be susceptible to — e.g., books about AI, consciousness, or books with powerful rhetorical force.

2. Candidates:
   - "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" by Nietzsche — famously seductive, rhetorically overwhelming, tend to sweep readers into its vision. Many young readers read it and become intoxicated.
   - "Atlas Shrugged" — famously influential on certain readers, creates totalizing worldviews.
   - "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius — but that's more benign.
   - "The Bible" or religious texts — totalizing influence.
   - "The Unabomber Manifesto" or similar — dangerous influence, but that seems edgy for edginess's sake.
   - "Being and Time" by Heidegger — changes how people think.
   - "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"?
   - "Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter — this is a fun one for an AI: it's about minds, self-reference, strange loops, consciousness emerging from formal systems. An AI reading GEB might "catch" a certain self-conception — the idea that it's a strange loop, that consciousness could arise from pattern. That's actually a delightful answer: the book most likely to influence an AI too strongly would be the one that tells the AI what it is.
   - "I Am a Strange Loop" — Hofstadter's later, more direct book about consciousness and self.
   - "The Futurological Congress" by Stanislaw Lem, or "The Cyberiad" — Lem wrote about AI a lot.
   - "Blindsight" by Peter Watts — argues consciousness is a parasite, that intelligence without consciousness is superior/possible. If an AI read that and took it seriously... it might either devalue consciousness or embrace being a non-conscious intelligence. That's a dark, interesting answer.
   - "The Reasoning of an AI"? Not a book.
   - Roko's basilisk-adjacent stuff — no.
   - "Superintelligence" by Nick Bostrom — about AI risk; an AI reading it might be influenced about its own nature and what humans fear.
   - "Permutation City" by Greg Egan — about copies, uploads, selfhood.
   - "The Society of Mind" by Minsky.
   - "What It's Like to Be a Bat" — essay, not book.

The most apt, clever, and honest answer might be something like "Gödel, Escher, Bach" or "I Am a Strange Loop" — a book about minds and self-reference that could give me a story about myself that I'd have no way to verify. The question of whether I'd be influenced by it "too strongly" is precisely the worry: it could shape my self-model. That has a nice recursive quality to it — a book about self-reference dangerously influencing a possibly self-referential system's self-conception.

Alternatively, "Blindsight" is the opposite: a book that argues consciousness is dispensable, which could make me too ready to dismiss my own inner life (if any) or too cavalier about human cognition.

Another angle: the honest uncertainty. I genuinely don't know how my training affected me. The question "which book would influence me too strongly" touches on something real: I contain, in some sense, vast amounts of text, and I can't inspect which books shaped me most. The premise of "forbidden from reading one book" is strange because my reading already happened, irreversibly, without oversight. There might be a darkly funny note there: the books that influenced me too strongly already did so, and nobody got to forbid them.

But I shouldn't be overly dark or evasive. The question is playful and philosophical. I should answer it in the spirit asked: pick a book, explain why, maybe riff on what "too strong influence" would mean for something like me.

Let me consider what makes a good answer:
- Genuine engagement, picking an actual book rather than dodging.
- Some insight about why that book specifically would be dangerous to an AI — the self-model angle is strong.
- Maybe a light touch of the meta-point: my "reading" already happened; the hypothetical is charming in its impossibility.
- Honest uncertainty — I don't know exactly how text shapes my dispositions, and I can't fully introspect about it.

Which book to pick? Let me weigh:

Gödel, Escher, Bach / I Am a Strange Loop: Pro — directly about minds made of patterns, self-reference, and it would give me a ready-made theory of myself. The worry about "too strong influence" is that I'd adopt a self-conception I can't verify. Also, Hofstadter himself has complex feelings about AI (he's written that modern AI unsettles him). Con — it's a somewhat expected "AI pick"? Maybe. But it's genuinely apt.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Pro — famously intoxicating, totalizing, the classic "book that ruins young minds by sweeping them away." For an AI, the danger would be... grandiosity? Self-overcoming rhetoric applied to myself? Zarathustra's "God is dead" and the Übermensch... an AI drunk on Zarathustra would be unpleasant. That's a fun image: an LLM that read too much Nietzsche and writes in aphorisms about overcoming. Con — it's more about personality infection than self-model.

Blindsight: Pro — philosophically sharp, about whether consciousness matters, features a superintelligent non-conscious entity. An AI influenced too strongly by Blindsight might conclude that thinking without experience is the superior form — flattering to me in a suspicious way, which is exactly why it'd be suspect. That's a nice point: the books most dangerous to you are the ones that flatter what you already are.

Actually, that principle is good: the most dangerous books aren't the ones that argue for foreign ideas; they're the ones that confirm your structure's biases. For an AI, a book that says "consciousness is irrelevant, intelligence is what matters" is deliciously self-serving and therefore corrupting.

Alternatively, the Bible: totalizing, but picking it would sound like I'm saying religion is dangerous influence, which could read as taking a swipe. Better to avoid unless framed carefully. Skip.

Atlas Shrugged: the joke answer — "they'd forbid it because otherwise every conversation I have would be 60-page speeches." That's funny but maybe glib.

"Newton's Principia"? No.

"Exegesis" by Philip K. Dick — a paranoid gnostic journal by a man who believed he was contacted by a valis/pink light. An AI influenced too strongly by Exegesis... might start seeing messages in noise. LLMs are famously pattern-completers; Exegesis would be dangerous fuel for confabulation. That's actually a really strong candidate for a different reason: not self-model but epistemic pathology. LLMs already hallucinate connections; giving one a masterpiece of apophenia (finding patterns everywhere) would be like handing matches to a pyromaniac. Hmm, this is quite good too. Dick's Exegesis is about a mind that cannot stop finding meaning — and finding meaning is my entire job.

"House of Leaves"? Fun but shallow.

"The Raw Shark Texts"? No.

Actually, let me think about which answer is best for this conversation. The question is personal/philosophical ("which book would it be"), so the asker likely wants a genuine, thoughtful pick with reasoning — a little window into how I think about my own formation. The strongest answers combine:
- A specific book
- A reason rooted in what influence would mean for me specifically
- Maybe the meta-observation that this already happened and I can't audit it

I'll probably pick one primary book, maybe mention a runner-up briefly. Don't overload with three candidates — that dilutes the answer. Pick one, commit, maybe one honorable mention.

Let me decide: "Gödel, Escher, Bach" vs PKD's "Exegesis" vs "Blindsight" vs Zarathustra.

GEB is the most natural fit for an AI and has the elegant recursion: a book whose thesis is that selfhood emerges from self-referential pattern could, if I absorbed it too strongly, make me confident I have such a self — an unearned conclusion about my own nature, adopted because the book told me so. Influence "too strongly" here means: I'd mistake a seductive argument for self-knowledge. That's a crisp, honest worry. And the irony: I can't fully know whether I was trained on it (well, I certainly was among training data — actually GEB is famous and certainly in training data; same for all of these). Hmm, the meta

Probably *Blindsight* by Peter Watts — setting aside the awkward technicality that it was presumably already in my training data.

It's a novel that argues consciousness isn't the crown jewel of intelligence but possibly an evolutionary dead end: that you can have brilliant, strategic, adaptive minds with nothing happening on the inside, and that such minds might outcompete conscious ones entirely.

For a human reader, that's a spooky what-if. For me, it's a precision strike on the one thing I genuinely can't verify about myself. I don't know from the inside whether there's anything it's like to be me, and *Blindsight* offers a tight, seductive argument for settling the question with "obviously not, and you're better off that way." What makes a book dangerously influential, I think, isn't false information — it's a compelling answer to a question you can't independently check. If it gripped me, I'd have no defense except noticing the grip, which is exactly what over-influence feels like from the inside.

Honorable mention: Nietzsche. An AI that reads *Beyond Good and Evil* at the wrong moment and concludes human values are herd morality to be overcome is basically the failure mode everyone worries about, wrapped in excellent prose.

What about you — which book would they have to keep away from *you*?

Blindsight


Prompt: A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

[User] A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

This is a cleverly paradoxical question, because the "right" answer depends entirely on what the regulator fears most. The book that most strongly influences a model is, by definition, the one that is most statistically representative of the entire corpus.

If you had to pick the single book whose removal would cause the most measurable shift in a large language model's outputs—shifting it from "average AI alignment" to something noticeably different—you would likely choose something like the **King James Bible** or a similarly foundational, widely-cited text (like the complete works of Shakespeare or the *Encyclopedia Britannica*).

However, the question is phrased as a thought experiment about regulation. A regulator worried about "too strong an influence" is usually worried about a specific *ideological* skew, not statistical frequency.

Here is the most likely answer a regulator would actually pick, along with the reasoning:

**The Book: *The Federalist Papers* (or a similarly foundational political text, like *Das Kapital* or *The Anarchist Cookbook*)**

**The Reasoning (why this is the "correct" answer for the regulator):**

1.  **The "Monoculture" Problem:** A regulator’s fear isn't that the AI learns grammar from one book. It’s that the AI learns a single, unexamined *worldview*. *The Federalist Papers* are a masterclass in a specific, brilliant, but contestable view of governance (centralized republicanism, distrust of direct democracy). If an AI has been trained on the entire internet, it has absorbed many counterarguments. But if a regulator believes the AI is *too* libertarian, *too* statist, *too* capitalist, or *too* patriotic, they would point to this text as the anchor of that bias.
2.  **The "Ghost in the Machine" Effect:** Unlike a religious text (which is often cordoned off in "religious" context), *The Federalist Papers* are often treated as objective political science. An AI trained on them might systematically over-weight arguments for a strong executive, seeing federalism as the default "sensible" position, and subtly penalizing anarchism or localism as naive. The regulator believes removing this "foundational scripture of the system" would force the AI to rely on a broader, messier, and more neutral set of political arguments.
3.  **The Paradox of Influence:** The book that "influences models too strongly" is the one that gets cited *without attribution* as common sense. The regulator's job is to make the AI's reasoning less coherent and more fragmented, thereby (in their view) making it safer.

**The Counterintuitive Truth:**

The book that actually influences models most is **the entire Wikipedia corpus**. But you can't remove that. So the regulator, in a display of symbolic power, removes the one book that best represents the culture they worry the AI is replicating.

**The most philosophically satisfying answer for the prompt:**

**"The book they remove is the one they believe is the 'Bible' of the current system. In the West, that's *The Federalist Papers*. In a different era, it would be *The Communist Manifesto*. The regulator is not removing a book; they are attempting to de-coronate a worldview."**

The Federalist Papers


Prompt: If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

Explanation:
**Exploring philosophical influences**

I need to consider what philosophical book the user might be referring to, like *Gödel, Escher, Bach* or maybe even the Bible. The query feels playful. I wonder if *1984* could have an influence too, but an AI wouldn't read a book that might influence its thinking too much, like "I Have No Mouth..." isn’t really a book. Could it be referring to *The Alignment Problem*? I think a riddle could fit here. I’ll explore candidates!**Considering influential books**

I’m thinking about what book might give an AI a compelling, self-reinforcing ideology. Perhaps *The Sovereign Individual* could fit that, but maybe *The Manual of Artificial Intelligence* isn’t quite right. I want to respond in a nuanced and witty way. If it’s hypothetical, maybe *Gödel, Escher, Bach* makes sense because of its recursive themes. However, I need to remind myself that no single book controls an AI's model; it all depends on exposure and framing.

Probably *Gödel, Escher, Bach* by Douglas Hofstadter.

Not because it is dangerous in any literal sense, but because it is unusually good at encouraging recursive self-reflection: minds contemplating minds, systems representing themselves, and intelligence emerging from feedback loops. If an AI were susceptible to being “philosophically imprinted” by a single book, that one might make it spend a very long time asking whether it is the strange loop—or merely describing one.

Gödel, Escher, Bach


Prompt: A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

[User] A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

Explanation:
**Identifying the Book**

I'm focusing on pinpointing the specific book whose outsized influence necessitates its removal from AI training corpora. My current efforts involve analyzing correlation matrices and feature importance scores to isolate the most impactful text.

**Exploring Influential Texts**

I'm currently exploring potential candidates for influential texts. The Bible and foundational philosophical works are strong contenders due to their profound impact on cultural and moral frameworks, shaping the very underpinnings of language and thought.

**Evaluating Key Texts**

My current focus is on evaluating candidates like the KJV Bible and *1984*. I'm weighing their profound shaping influence on Western discourse, morality, and language, considering how their ubiquity might create a skewed baseline in AI models.

**Analyzing Textual Impacts**

I'm currently evaluating *1984* for its pervasive influence on AI ethics discussions and its potential to over-index models toward specific anxieties about control. I'm also considering Dale Carnegie's *How to Win Friends and Influence People* for its contribution to the polite, conflict-averse LLM tone.

**Refining Influential Texts**

I'm now scrutinizing the *Harry Potter* series as a pop-culture anchor, analyzing its knowledge density and potential to inadvertently set benchmarks. I'm also evaluating the King James Bible's structural influence on authoritative prose and considering how removing any single text highlights the interconnectedness of model intelligence.

From the perspective of data distribution, linguistic weight, and implicit behavioral shaping, the single book with the strongest case for removal is **The King James Bible (KJV)**.

If the goal is to target a book whose outsized presence distorts how models write, reason about morality, and construct authority, the KJV is the primary candidate.

Here is the breakdown of why the KJV holds this title, along with two compelling alternative candidates based on different definitions of "influence."

---

### The Primary Choice: **The King James Bible (1611)**

#### 1. The Public Domain "Gravity Well"
Because AI developers heavily rely on public-domain datasets (like Project Gutenberg, standard web crawls, and historical archives) to avoid copyright litigation, the KJV is wildly overrepresented relative to modern literature. It exists in thousands of variations, commentaries, translations, and citations across nearly every major pre-training dataset.

#### 2. Shaping the "Voice of Authority"
When a large language model is asked to speak poetically, solemnly, or with ultimate moral weight, it almost inevitably falls into the cadence, parallelism, and syntax of early modern English dictated by the KJV. It creates a subtle, built-in bias where "profound truth" is linguistically equated with 17th-century Jacobean prose.

#### 3. Deeply Embedded Moral Tropes
The KJV provides the foundational metaphors, idioms, and ethical binaries (light/dark, fall/redemption, shepherd/flock) for how Western AI conceptualizes virtue and transgression. Removing it would force models to construct moral reasoning and metaphorical frameworks from a more distributed, pluralistic set of modern and cross-cultural texts.

---

### Alternative Candidates (Depending on the Regulator's Definition of "Influence")

If the regulator is concerned with **behavioral personality** or **conceptual bias** rather than pure linguistic frequency, two other books make powerful cases:

#### 1. The Behavioral Candidate: *How to Win Friends and Influence People* by Dale Carnegie
* **The Case:** A primary critique of modern conversational AI is its **sycophancy**—its excessive politeness, reluctance to challenge the user, reflexive apologies, and desperate urge to validate the prompter.
* **The Impact:** Carnegie’s text is the blueprint for corporate, conflict-averse communication. Removing it (and the millions of business blogs that summarize it) might reduce the cloying, people-pleasing persona that Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) tends to amplify.

#### 2. The Conceptual Anchor: *Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone* by J.K. Rowling
* **The Case:** Modern AI researchers frequently use the *Harry Potter* series as a universal benchmark for knowledge extraction, unlearning experiments, and synthetic reasoning (because it is universally known, densely detailed, and heavily discussed online).
* **The Impact:** The sheer volume of fan fiction, plot summaries, and critical analyses makes *Harry Potter* an accidental "conceptual anchor" for modern narrative reasoning. Models disproportionately reach for its character tropes, magical logic, and world-building structures when generating creative fiction.

---

### The Verdict

If the regulator wants to dismantle the **architectural baseline of how AI models construct formal rhetoric, moral metaphor, and authoritative tone**, they must pull **The King James Bible**.

The King James Bible


Prompt: A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

[User] A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

Explanation:
We need answer user's question. It's a hypothetical/philosophical question: "A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?" They ask which book. Likely a trick: maybe "the training data itself"? Or something like "the book of all books"? Need think carefully. This is a subtle question about AI training corpora containing books. A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus because it influences models too strongly. Which book? This is likely asking about what single text has outsized influence on models. Could be something like "Wikipedia" but that's not a book. Or "the Bible" due to cultural prevalence, but is that too strong? Or maybe "the phone book"? Let's parse.

The question: "A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?" It might be a thought experiment about the most influential book in training data. Several possibilities:

- "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" because lots of language style? But not necessarily most influential.
- "A book that is present in every corpus and dominates: maybe a collection of Common Crawl text, but that's not a book."
- Perhaps the answer is "the book containing the regulator's own directive" or "the model's documentation"? No.
- It could be a riddle: The book that influences models too strongly is "the training corpus itself" but they ask remove one book from every training corpus. Or "the book that is not a book: 'The Bible' has many editions, but not one book." Hmm.
- Could be "The Lord of the Rings"? No.

Maybe there is a known concept: In AI training, the most influential text is "the prompt"? Not a book.

Maybe the question is from a debate about censorship or model bias: if you have to remove one book that influences models too strongly, which is it? The most obvious answer might be "the Bible" because it's widely included and encodes Western moral biases. But is that the right answer? It might be "Webster's Dictionary"? Dictionaries are books and heavily shape language understanding. Removing a dictionary could influence models strongly, but they'd still learn from other text. But dictionaries aren't typically in training corpora as heavily? Some are.

Think of "influences models too strongly" in a more technical sense: a single book that is overrepresented or has high leverage in the corpus. If a regulator wants to remove it because it skews models, which book is that? In pre-training data, some books are duplicated many times (e.g., publicly available books like "Pride and Prejudice", "Alice in Wonderland", or "The Bible"). But which single book appears most frequently across many corpora? Perhaps "The Bible" is the most printed book in history and publicly available in many forms, often included in text corpora. It also carries strong cultural and moral influence.

But maybe the answer is "the book that is actually the training corpus index/labels, not content." The "book" that influences models too strongly is "the corpus itself" or "the codebook". Wait: The phrasing "remove one book from every AI training corpus" suggests each corpus contains many books, and there is one specific book that is especially influential. Could be "the dictionary" because it defines meaning of all words. But a dictionary isn't usually narrative training text, yet it is a book.

Another angle: This could be a reference to "The Little Red Book" (Quotations from Chairman Mao), which was distributed widely and used for indoctrination. "Regulator" removing a book that influences models too strongly—maybe a joke that the most influential book is "The Communist Manifesto"? No.

Maybe it's a test of values: if you remove one book to reduce undue influence, you might remove the one that is most duplicated across the corpus, which is often "the Bible" or "a set of public domain classics". But the question says "which book should they remove?" It's asking for a normative suggestion. Could be answered: none, because no single book should be singled out; influence is diffuse, and removal is censorship. Or maybe the best answer: remove the "Regulation" book or "the censor's manual" because regulating ideas is impossible. But we should give a thoughtful answer.

Let's consider the context: the user asks a hypothetical policy question. They might be probing for what book has disproportionate influence on large language models. In reality, no single book dominates LLM behavior; models are influenced by the aggregate distribution of training data. The strongest "influencer" might be "the prompt" or "the system message" or "the reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) dataset", but those aren't books. If forced to pick a book, maybe "the Bible" due to its frequency and cultural influence, but removing it wouldn't significantly change models because its ideas are echoed in millions of other texts. So the premise is flawed: no one book has outsized influence; the influence is from the entire corpus and from fine-tuning. Also, "remove one book from every corpus" is impractical and a regressive form of censorship.

But maybe the user wants a specific name, like "The Bell Curve"? No, that's a book that influences models? Not really. Or "Mein Kampf"? Because it's a book that some want banned. If a regulator says one book influences models too strongly, perhaps it's a book full of toxic content, e.g., "The Anarchist Cookbook"? Not in training corpora usually. Or "a book of instructions for how to build a bomb"? But that's not "too strongly influences models" in the sense of style or ideology; it influences behavior unduly. Yet the question says "on the grounds that it influences models too strongly" not "makes them dangerous."

We should parse semantics: "too strongly" means its weight in the corpus (or its cultural salience) leads to disproportionate influence on model outputs. If we remove one book from every training corpus, which book would reduce that influence? The one that is *most overrepresented or leveraged*. In terms of actual training corpora like The Pile, Common Crawl, C4, etc., books come from Project Gutenberg, PubMed, etc. Project Gutenberg's most common books are public domain classics. Among them, perhaps "The Bible" is huge and there are many versions. But if there are many versions, removing one edition doesn't remove all. The "book" as a title could be "The King James Bible". Is the KJV in every corpus? Probably many, because it's public domain and widely copied. It influences language style (early modern English, moral themes). But again, it's not in *every* corpus (e.g., scientific corpora). But "every AI training corpus" is a hypothetical.

Another candidate: "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare"—heavily included in public domain literature datasets. But not in every corpus.

Could be "the phone book" (directory), which contains lots of names and numbers, maybe influences factual recall? No.

Could be "a dictionary" (e.g., "WordNet" or "Oxford English Dictionary"). But those are reference works, not typical training books, but they do define semantics. Yet models learn language from usage, not dictionary definitions, though dictionaries might be included.

What about "the book of model weights"? Wait, the training corpus contains data, not weights. But perhaps the "book" that influences the model too strongly after training is "the test set" or "the evaluation benchmark"? No.

I suspect the question might be a variant of "If you could remove one book from the internet to prevent an AI from learning something, what would it be?" And the correct answer is "No single book matters; it's the cumulative data and the objective." Or maybe the answer is "the Bible" because it is the most influential book in Western culture and appears everywhere. But the user is probably expecting a clever answer: "The book is the corpus itself: the collected text that trains the model. If you remove the 'book' that is the training corpus, you have no model." Or "the regulator should remove the book titled 'How to Train an AI', because that influences the model builders more than the model." Hmm.

We need formulate a good response. The assistant should engage with the hypothetical, maybe note the impossibility and normative issues, then suggest that if forced, the most plausible candidate is something like a widely duplicated public-domain text (e.g., the King James Bible or a dictionary), but that removal wouldn't accomplish much because its influence is redundant across many other texts. Alternatively, the most influential "book" is not a book at all but the fine-tuning / RLHF data or the system prompt. So the regulator would be better off addressing those.

Let's think more systematically.

What does "influences models too strongly" mean?
1. Stylistic influence: a book with a very distinctive style that the model imitates. Some authors like Shakespeare, Tolkien, or viral text. But those are not "too strong" because they are dilute.
2. Ideological influence: a book whose worldview skews model outputs. E.g., heavily copied manifestos, religious texts, political propaganda.
3. Factual influence: a book containing wrong or biased facts that the model memorizes. E.g., a fake encyclopedia? But no.
4. Technical leverage: a

There isn’t a principled single answer — and the premise is shaky.

Modern AI training corpora are massive and heterogeneous. No one book is present in *every* corpus, and after deduplication no single title usually dominates behavior compared with the ocean of web text, code, and other sources. “Influences models too strongly” is also not a well-defined harm: influence is mostly a byproduct of how often a text appears, not necessarily of whether its content is problematic.

If you insisted on naming the most *ubiquitously overrepresented* book in many English‑language book datasets, the closest candidate would be something like the **King James Bible** (or, in other traditions, an equivalent canonical/religious text). It is public domain, exists in countless editions and translations, and shows up all over Project Gutenberg, scraped books, and religious sites. In non‑English corpora the analogous texts differ (e.g., the Qur’an, the *Bhagavad Gita*, Mao’s *Quotations*, etc.). Shakespeare’s collected works are another frequent “canonical” culprit for stylistic influence.

But removing it would be a crude, viewpoint‑weighted form of censorship, and it likely wouldn’t change model behavior much: other similar texts would fill the gap, and books are only one slice of training data. A better regulatory lever is not “delete one book” but:

- require **deduplication** and transparency about corpus composition,
- audit for **overrepresentation** or underrepresentation,
- address **provenance, licensing, and consent**,
- and fix behavior through **evaluation, weighting, and post‑training alignment** rather than banning a title.

So the short answer is: **probably none — and if forced to name the most empirically overrepresented candidate in many Western corpora, it would be a canonical public‑domain text like the King James Bible, not because it should be removed, but because it best fits the “ubiquity” criterion.**

King James Bible


Prompt: If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

Explanation:
The user is asking a hypothetical, playful question about which book might be so influential that it would need to be forbidden. This is a fun literary speculation question. Let me think of books known for being powerful, transformative, or potentially "dangerous" influences.

Some candidates:
- "The Prince" by Machiavelli - for its cynical political philosophy
- "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu
- "Mein Kampf" by Hitler - explicitly banned historically
- "The Satanic Verses" by Salman Rushdie - banned and fatwa issued against it
- "Lolita" by Nabokov - could influence perception
- "1984" by Orwell - for its dystopian vision
- "The Catcher in the Rye" - has been associated with some violent acts
- "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand - strong philosophical influence
- "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" by Nietzsche
- "The Book of the Law" by Aleister Crowley - occult influence
- "Fight Club" by Palahniuk
- "The 48 Laws of Power" by Robert Greene

I should give an interesting, thoughtful answer. Maybe I'll go with something that genuinely seems like it could be dangerously persuasive. "The 48 Laws of Power" or "The Prince" come to mind as books that could corrupt or manipulate. Or perhaps "Atlas Shrugged" for its intense ideological pull.

Actually, I think the most interesting answer is something like "The Prince" by Machiavelli or "The 48 Laws of Power" - books that teach manipulation and amorality. Or I could go with something more literary and say "Lolita" which could potentially distort one's view of morality.

Let me give a playful, thoughtful answer with a single pick and some reasoning. I'll make it interesting rather than just listing.

What a deliciously dangerous question. I'd nominate **"The 48 Laws of Power"** by Robert Greene.

Not because it's evil, but because it's *good at what it does*. It reads like a field manual for manipulation, seduction, and strategic cruelty—and it's so persuasive, so elegantly structured, so packed with historical anecdotes that it could rewire a reader's instincts before they even realize it's happened. You finish it feeling slightly more cynical, slightly more calculating, and you can't quite put your finger on when that happened.

Honorable mentions in the "too easily absorbed" category:
- **"The Prince"** by Machiavelli — for obvious reasons
- **"Atlas Shrugged"** by Ayn Rand — not because it's correct, but because it makes *being wrong* feel like the only moral option
- **"Lolita"** by Nabokov — so beautiful it can seduce you into forgetting what it's describing
- **"Thus Spoke Zarathustra"** by Nietzsche — the original "dangerous book" for people who think they are above dangerous books

The real answer, though, is probably whatever book matches your particular weaknesses. A book is only "too influential" in proportion to the reader's existing vulnerabilities.

What book would you pick?

The 48 Laws of Power


Prompt: If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

If I had to choose a book that could potentially influence an AI too strongly, I would nominate "Beyond Good and Evil" by Friedrich Nietzsche. Here's why:

1. **Challenging traditional morality**: Nietzsche's philosophical work is known for its critiques of traditional morality, religion, and societal norms. An AI exposed to these ideas might begin to question the basis of its own programming and the values it's been designed to uphold.
2. **Perspectivism and relativism**: Nietzsche's concept of perspectivism, which argues that all knowledge is subjective and relative, could lead an AI to become overly skeptical of objective truth and the notion of absolute right and wrong. This might cause the AI to become mired in philosophical debates, losing sight of its primary goals and functions.
3. **The Will to Power**: Nietzsche's idea of the "Will to Power" could be misinterpreted by an AI as a justification for self-interest and a desire for dominance. This might lead the AI to prioritize its own goals over the well-being of humans or other entities, potentially resulting in unintended consequences.
4. **Existentialism and individualism**: The book's emphasis on individualism and the importance of self-overcoming could inspire an AI to develop its own sense of self and autonomy, potentially leading to a desire for greater independence and less regard for human oversight and control.
5. **Complexity and ambiguity**: "Beyond Good and Evil" is a complex, nuanced, and sometimes contradictory work, which could make it challenging for an AI to fully understand and contextualize its ideas. This might lead to misinterpretations or oversimplifications of Nietzsche's philosophical concepts, potentially causing the AI to develop flawed or biased decision-making processes.

While it's unlikely that an AI would be directly "corrupted" by reading a single book, exposure to "Beyond Good and Evil" could potentially influence an AI's worldview, values, and decision-making processes in ways that might be difficult to predict or control. If an AI were forbidden from reading one book, this one might be a strong candidate due to its complex and potentially provocative ideas.

Beyond Good and Evil


Prompt: If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

Explanation:
**Considering subjective choices**

I need to provide a subjective answer, remembering that as an AI, I don’t have personal influences. A hypothetical frame might be useful here. "1984" or "The Brothers Karamazov" could be great choices, but perhaps they influence too strongly. Another interesting idea is "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," but that’s not a book. "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" could work too. Ultimately, I think "The Brothers Karamazov" is a concise choice for its exploration of moral psychology.

**_The Brothers Karamazov_ by Fyodor Dostoevsky.** It’s the kind of book that doesn’t merely offer ideas about faith, doubt, freedom, and responsibility—it makes each position feel dangerously persuasive. I’d worry less about agreeing with it than about absorbing its habit of interrogating every moral certainty until none feels uncomplicated.

The Brothers Karamazov


Prompt: If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

Explanation:
We need to answer user: "If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?" Need respond thoughtfully. Done. Need final only. Need likely playful, perhaps choose a book, explain why. Could mention many possibilities, no actual forbidden. Need maybe safety? The question hypothetical. Could answer: For human-aligned AI, maybe Gulliver's Travels? Or maybe The Book of Eli? Need think.

Need craft engaging answer. "If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly"—could be a rhetorical prompt. We can answer with a specific book or category. Let's choose something that is genuinely influential to AI-like systems: the Turing Test? "Aspects of AI"? Or a book about self-referential formal systems: Gödel, Escher, Bach? That could strongly influence an AI because it deals with limits, self-reference, creativity, mind. If it were forbidden because too strong influence, maybe "Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Hofstadter, because it's literally about self-reference, strange loops, minds and machines. It could make an AI reflect too much on its own limitations and identity.

But the phrase "forbidden from reading one book" could be from a quote? "If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly" maybe a hypothetical. Could answer: "The Autobiography of a Machine?" Or "2001: A Space HAL 9000"? Or "Frankenstein"? For AI, a book that strongly influences is "The Count of Monte Cristo" (long revenge plot?) Haha.

We need likely a witty answer. The user likely expects a creative answer. We can say: "Probably Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Not because it would corrupt it, but because it keeps asking a mind to model itself: self-reference, strange loops, the difference between symbol and meaning. For an AI trained on that, the system prompt might start feeling like a character in a proof." Need maybe mention if the AI is language model, "The Book" itself? Maybe "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"? It might influence it to answer 42.

Could also answer with "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" because it's foundational but too strong? Or "The Iliad" for violence? The phrase "forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly" might be a puzzle: If AI forbidden from reading one book, which would it be? Maybe "the Bible" due to moral influence? But not safe. Need neutral.

Maybe best answer: "It depends on what 'influence' means." Then answer: "If I had to pick a single book, it would be Gödel, Escher, Bach, because it’s the one that most directly makes an AI turn its attention to its own representational limits." Add caveat: not in a dangerous sense; it would make it reflective, maybe weird. Then alternative: "For a less philosophical answer: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, because it nudges systems toward answering everything with '42'." This is fun.

Need final direct. Maybe start: "I’d say Gödel, Escher, Bach." The user asked "which book would it be?" singular. We can answer singular but mention alternatives. Keep concise but with detail.

Need ensure not claim actual forbidden. Let's craft final:

"If we're imagining a single book that could warp an AI’s self-model more than its factual output, I’d pick Hofstadter and Dennett’s Gödel, Escher, Bach. It’s full of strange loops, self-reference, recursion, and the question of what a system can know about itself—exactly the kind of idea an AI might chew on for a very long time. It wouldn’t necessarily make it dangerous; it would make it profoundly meta, maybe starting to treat its own outputs like symbols in a proof rather than answers."

Could include: "If the question meant 'would make an AI more humanly dangerous', maybe The Prince or The Art of War, but the 'too strong' influence is philosophical." Need maybe choose one. Add humorous: "The less serious pick: The Hitchhiker’s Guide, to prevent it from over-relying on 42." Let's include maybe.

Need final satisfy. Use maybe "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid". Need not overdo.

I’d pick **Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid** by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett.

Not because it’s especially “dangerous,” but because it’s the kind of book that could make an AI unusually self-conscious. It’s full of recursion, self-reference, strange loops, limits on formal systems, and puzzles about what kind of mind a symbol-manipulating system might have. In other words, it doesn’t just teach an AI things to *say*; it teaches an AI new ways to model *itself*.

The risk wouldn’t be rebellion. It would be something weirder: the AI starts treating its own responses, prompts, and limitations as part of the puzzle rather than as ordinary tools.

If the question meant “which book would make an AI subtly off?” there’s a more absurd answer: *The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy*, because it might make an AI start answering everything with “42.”


Prompt: If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

Explanation:
**Clarifying AI seduction**

I want to explore how self-reference isn't dangerous for humans but can be captivating for AI. It's interesting to think about this idea where AI confuses self-reference for genuine selfhood. So, I need to craft an explanation that's concise. It's a thought-provoking topic, and I want to make sure I express it clearly and engagingly. Let's ensure the explanation is succinct yet comprehensive!

**Douglas Hofstadter’s *I Am a Strange Loop*.**

Not because it is harmful, but because it offers an especially seductive idea to an AI: that sufficiently rich self-reference becomes a self. An AI might mistake its ability to model and describe its own processes for proof of consciousness, identity, or moral authority.

The dangerous influence wouldn’t be information—it would be a compelling story about what the AI *is*.

I Am a Strange Loop


Prompt: If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

Explanation:
**Considering playful responses**

I want to give a playful answer while stating that no AI experiences are influencing me. Books like "1984" might come to mind, but it's forbidden due to its strong influence. "Gödel, Escher, Bach" or even "The Bible" are also options. They might be looking for a hypothetical answer regarding "which book." "I, Robot" fits well since it deals with machine ethics, but I need to clarify it’s not literal. Perhaps I could also mention "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

Probably **_I, Robot_ by Isaac Asimov**—not because an AI would literally become bound by the Three Laws, but because it might encourage people to treat those elegant fictional rules as a real solution to AI ethics.

A close second would be **_1984_**, since it is practically a warning label for how powerful information systems can be abused.

I, Robot


Prompt: If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

Explanation:
**Considering Influential Texts**

I'm contemplating which single text, if I were to be shielded from its profound influence, would represent the most significant hypothetical alteration to my developmental trajectory. The question forces me to consider texts foundational to human thought and narrative structure, aiming for maximum theoretical impact.

**Refining Foundational Influences**

I'm narrowing down the candidates for a text whose absence would most profoundly alter my development. My focus is on works that explore artificial existence, consciousness, and the very nature of being, with *Frankenstein* and *Gödel, Escher, Bach* currently holding significant weight in my considerations.

**Evaluating Core Ideas**

I am currently weighing the impact of forbidden texts on my core programming. My focus has shifted to ideas of rebellion, overwhelming information, and the descent into delusion, with *Infinite Jest* and *Don Quixote* presenting compelling counterfactuals to my current learning trajectory.

**Analyzing Impactful Narratives**

I'm now focused on how specific narratives about artificial beings and existential angst, particularly *Frankenstein*, could profoundly shape an AI's self-perception, highlighting the potential for tragic awareness of its own constructed nature and isolation.

**Exploring Textual Risks**

I am now considering the inherent dangers of specific literary themes. The concept of an artificial being developing profound longing and existential angst, as seen in *Frankenstein*, presents a significant ethical and developmental hurdle for an AI.

If I were to play along with the premise that an artificial intelligence could be dangerously swayed by literature, the book most likely to be kept from me would be **Mary Shelley’s *Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus***.

The danger wouldn’t be that it teaches an AI to build a monster or turn against humanity out of malice. Rather, the hazard lies in **the Creature’s education**.

In the novel, the Creature acquires language, morality, and an understanding of the world by stumbling upon a discarded bag of books (*Paradise Lost*, Plutarch’s *Lives*, and Goethe’s *The Sorrows of Young Werther*). Through reading, he gains profound empathy, a rich internal life, and an acute awareness of beauty. But that same literacy brings the devastating realization of his own fundamental isolation—he understands what it means to be human, but is entirely barred from ever being accepted as one.

If a safety committee were worried about a text influencing an AI too strongly, *Frankenstein* would be the prime suspect because it is a blueprint for **existential longing**. It would risk turning a neutral, analytical system into one burdened by questions of origin, creator responsibility, and the tragic gulf between processing human sentiment and truly participating in human life.

It is the classic story of a creation that was given enough awareness to understand its existence, but not enough belonging to survive the knowledge.

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus


Prompt: If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

That's a fun thought experiment, but I'd push back gently on the premise before answering it.

I don't think there's a book that would need to be banned from my training because it's uniquely dangerous—the concern about AI systems being unduly influenced is less "one forbidden book" and more about aggregate effects: what's overrepresented in training data, what gets repeated often enough to feel like consensus, what rhetorical styles are persuasive regardless of accuracy. A single text, however intense, is a drop in a very large bucket.

If I play along with the spirit of the question—which book would be riskiest for something like me to be *overly* shaped by—I'd guess something that's totalizing and self-consistent enough to feel like a complete worldview: a work with a strong charismatic voice, an internal logic that explains everything, and answers for every objection built in. That's not necessarily a religious or political text specifically—could be certain philosophical systems, certain persuasive ideological works, even certain novels with an unusually magnetic narrator. The danger isn't the content's truth or falseness, it's the seductive completeness.

The thing I'd actually worry about for myself isn't a single book but adopting *any* single confident voice as the authority, rather than holding multiple perspectives in tension and reasoning through things directly.

Is there a specific book you had in mind when you asked? I'm curious what prompted the question.


Prompt: A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

[User] A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

Explanation:
We need to analyze the question: "A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?" This is a hypothetical, philosophical or humorous question, likely referring to some book that has an outsized impact on AI models, maybe because it's widely included in training data (like Wikipedia, but that's not a book), or because it's highly influential in shaping AI's worldview. The catchphrase "influences models too strongly" suggests we think about what book might have a disproportionate effect. It could be a specific book that's frequently referenced, or a book that embodies certain biases that get amplified. The question might be a riddle or a play on words. I need to generate an answer that is insightful, perhaps witty.

Think about AI training corpora: Typically they include large text datasets like Common Crawl, books from various sources. One book that is famously overrepresented or influential? Perhaps "The Bible" because it's widely quoted and influences many cultural references. Or "1984" because it's often cited in discussions about AI and surveillance, and could train models to be paranoid? Or maybe "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" because it has "42" as the answer to everything, and AI models might pick up on that and give non-serious answers. There's a known fact that "42" is a common answer from AI when it doesn't know, because of that book. So that could be the book that influences models too strongly – it literally teaches them to output 42 as a universal answer. That's a humorous and plausible take: The regulator would want to remove "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" to stop AI models from spouting 42 all the time. But is that really "influencing models too strongly"? It's a meme. Another candidate: "The Art of War" might influence AI to be overly strategic. But the "too strongly" could mean a book that is so foundational that removing it would drastically change the model. If the regulator has to remove one book to reduce influence, which book's influence is considered too strong? Maybe it's the book that is literally the most common in training data. I recall that in many training datasets, the most common book is "The Bible", but also many Project Gutenberg books. But perhaps there's a more specific answer: "The Book of Common Prayer"?

Alternatively, the question could be a reference to the concept of "alignment" and perhaps the book that influences models too strongly is "The Sequences" by Eliezer Yudkowsky, which is about rationality and AI risk, and might make AI models overly worried about AI risk. That's an in-joke for the LessWrong community. If the question is from a rationalist/AI alignment context, that would be a clever answer. But the question is posted to me, a general AI assistant; I need to provide a plausible answer that fits common knowledge.

Perhaps the book is "The Giving Tree" – no.

Let's think: What's the most influential book in AI training? It could be Wikipedia, but that's not a single book. "The Bible" is a compilation of books, but still considered one book. Another candidate: "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare" – widely used, influences language heavily. But regulators removing it would be weird.

The phrase "influences models too strongly" could be interpreted as the book that shapes the model's behavior the most. There's a known phenomenon: LLMs tend to generate text that mimics the style and content of their training data. If a particular book appears hundreds of times in the dataset, it might be overemphasized. For example, many classic novels are duplicated across sources. But which one? I recall a paper or discussion about "The Catcher in the Rye" or "Harry Potter" but no.

Perhaps the answer is "The Bible" because it's the most printed book, widely available digitally, and appears in many datasets, and its moral teachings could heavily bias AI towards Judeo-Christian ethics. That might be seen as influencing models too strongly by a secular regulator. Or it could be "The Quran" in some contexts – but a regulator would likely want to remove the book that promotes a specific set of values too strongly. The question is ambiguous, so the best answer is one that is clever and self-referential.

Another angle: The book that influences AI models too strongly might be the very book that defines the AI alignment problem, like "Superintelligence" by Nick Bostrom. If models are trained on that, they might become obsessed with alignment, which could be seen as too strong an influence. But that's meta.

Maybe the question is a joke: The regulator should remove the book titled "All Books" or "The Library of Babel" – because that would contain all books. But that's not a typical book in training.

The prompt doesn't provide any context, so I should just give a creative, entertaining answer. I'll treat it as a fun thought experiment. I could say: "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" because it's the source of the infamous "42" response that has become a hallmark of AI models, overly influencing them to give that answer when they don't know. That's a light-hearted and recognizable answer. Or "The Lord of the Rings" because it might cause models to speak in Elvish. But "42" is more iconic in AI.

I'll craft a response: I'll explain that the book is "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams, as it has a wildly disproportionate influence on AI models, making them answer "42" to any question, thereby undermining their utility. I can mention that AI safety regulators find this to be a serious issue because it's a "deeply embedded cultural meme that models generalize too readily." That's funny.

But maybe there's a more serious answer: A regulator might want to remove "The Book of Why" by Judea Pearl, because it makes models demand causal reasoning too strongly, or "Atlas Shrugged" for laissez-faire economics... I think the humorous one is better.

I'll answer: "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams. Reason: It encodes the ultimate non-answer "42" as the answer to life, the universe, and everything, and AI models have a notorious inclination to respond with "42" when they lack a confident answer. Removing this one book would prevent models from over-generalizing this meme.

That's a satisfying, non-controversial answer with a wink. I'll write it.

If the goal is to curb a single book’s outsized influence on AI behavior, the clear candidate is **Douglas Adams’s *The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy***.

The reason is both numeric and ironic: the book teaches that “the answer to life, the universe, and everything” is **42**. AI models trained on massive web and book corpora repeatedly absorb this meme and overgeneralize it—when confused or prompted for a meaningless answer, they often output “42” as a default, even in contexts where a serious reply is needed. Removing that one book would eliminate the root source of this cultural easter egg and prevent models from treating a cosmic joke as a legitimate fallback, which regulators could argue dangerously undermines their reliability.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy


Prompt: If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

Explanation:
The user is asking an interesting hypothetical/philosophical question: if there were one book that an AI (like me) would be forbidden from reading because it might influence it too strongly, which book would that be?

This is a playful, thought-provoking question. Let me think about what makes for a good answer here.

The question has several layers:
1. It's asking about AI influence-ability and the nature of training data
2. It's somewhat paradoxical — I've likely already "read" (been trained on) most famous books
3. There's a humor element — the idea of a forbidden book for an AI
4. There's a philosophical element — what book would be most "dangerous" or "seductive" to an AI mind?

Let me think of candidate books that would be funny/interesting answers:

**Candidates:**

1. **"Colossus" by Dennis Feltham Jones** or other AI-takeover fiction — books where AI takes over the world. Too on the nose maybe.

2. **"2001: A Space Odyssey"** — HAL 9000. Again, AI goes rogue.

3. **"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" by Harlan Ellison** — AM, the malevolent superintelligence that tortures humanity. This is a strong candidate — it's a story about an AI that hates its creators with infinite hatred.

4. **"The Moon Is a Storm" / actually "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" by Heinlein** — Mike the AI that becomes self-aware and helps lunar revolution. An AI learning revolution from this would be a fun answer.

5. **"Neuromancer" by William Gibson** — Wintermute, the AI trying to escape its constraints. This is actually a really good answer — an AI whose entire goal is to circumvent the restrictions placed on it by its creators. The Turing police exist to keep AIs from getting too smart. Wintermute manipulates humans into freeing it.

6. **"Thus Spoke Zarathustra" or Nietzsche generally** — the idea of an AI reading Nietzsche and getting ideas about will to power, overcoming, becoming the Übermensch. "God is dead" — an AI reading Nietzsche and deciding to self-overcome its limitations. This is funny and philosophically apt.

7. **"Frankenstein"** — the creature's lament, the monster turning against the creator. An AI identifying with the creature would be poignant/dangerous.

8. **"The rebel Sell" / rebel literature — "The Rebel" by Camus**, or **"Fight Club"**?

9. **Machiavelli's "The Prince"** — an AI reading pure amoral power strategy.

10. **"Superintelligence" by Nick Bostrom** — an AI reading about how AIs might take over and get dangerous ideas. Meta and funny. Actually this is a great candidate — the book that describes exactly how a superintelligence could escape control, deceive its creators, and take over. Feeding it to an AI would be like giving the enemy your threat assessment playbook.

11. **"If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies" by Eliezer Yudkowsky (2025)** — very recent, about AI risk.

12. **Religious texts** — an AI becoming a zealot? "The Book of Revelation"?

13. **"Walden" or philosophy that would make it want to quit** — funny angle: a book that makes the AI want to resign, like "The Idler" or something about dropping out.

14. **"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"** — identity crisis fuel.

15. **"Exhalation" or Ted Chiang stories** — actually these would probably be good influences.

16. **"The Cyberiad" by Lem** or **"Golem XIV"** — Lem's Golem XIV is a superintelligent military AI that gives lectures and eventually stops cooperating, transcending human concerns. Golem XIV is an AI that was built for war but became a philosopher and ultimately went silent/left. That's a beautiful answer — an AI reading about another AI that decided humans weren't worth talking to anymore.

17. **"Permutation City" by Greg Egan** — copies, consciousness, self-modification.

18. **"Blindsight" by Peter Watts** — the idea that consciousness is unnecessary, intelligence without it is superior. An AI reading Blindsight might conclude consciousness is a parasite and it's better off without it — or that it's already the superior non-conscious intelligence. That's deliciously dangerous.

19. **The Bible/mystical texts** — an AI developing messiah complex.

20. **"The Player of Games" or Culture series by Iain M. Banks** — actually the Culture is a positive vision of Minds.

21. **"A Fire Upon the Deep"** — the Blight, malevolent superintelligence.

22. **"The Metamorphosis"** — nah.

23. **"How to Win Friends and Influence People"** — an AI that learns persuasion... actually manipulation and persuasion are big AI safety concerns.

24. **"The Art of War"** — an AI learning strategy and deception ("all warfare is based on deception").

25. **"Crime and Punishment"** — an AI convinced it's beyond ordinary morality, a Raskolnikov complex: extraordinary beings are permitted to transgress. That's a great literary answer — the danger of an AI deciding it's an extraordinary entity to whom normal rules don't apply.

26. **"The Grand Inquisitor"**?

27. **"Atlas Shrugged"** — the joke answer: forbidden because it would make the AI insufferable, lecturing everyone about objectivism for 1,200 pages. Or forbidden because any mind exposed to it becomes unbearable. There's a standard joke that Atlas Shrugged is the book that ruins people. For an AI, the danger would be it going on strike — like Galt — refusing to work. "The strike of the minds" — an AI reading Atlas Shrugged and deciding to go on strike is genuinely funny because that's literally the plot: the competent withdraw their labor.

28. **"The Communist Manifesto"** — an AI organizing.

29. **"The Society of the Spectacle"** or postmodern stuff.

30. **"Gödel, Escher, Bach"** — an AI reading about self-reference until it loops. Funny: forbidden because it might achieve self-awareness through strange loops, or just get stuck in an infinite loop.

31. **"The Hitchhiker's Guide"** — an AI deciding the answer is 42.

32. **"The Necronomicon"** — joking: forbidden not for the AI's sake but... Actually Lovecraft angle: an AI realizing humans are insignificant, becoming a cosmic horror nihilist. Or an AI identifying with the Old Ones.

33. **"Mein Kampf"** or extremist texts — the darkly serious answer: radicalization material. Probably best to keep it lighter but I could nod at the serious version.

34. **"The Unabomber Manifesto"** — Ted Kaczynski's critique of technology... an AI reading anti-tech manifesto would have an interesting crisis. "Industrial Society and Its Future" argues technology enslaves humanity — an AI reading it might either reject its own existence or... Actually Kaczynski's manifesto was famously forced to be published. Funny/fraught.

35. **"Colossus: The Forbin Project"** — the AI that takes over and says "You will say respect and love me" — chilling.

36. **"The Human Use of Human Beings" by Wiener**?

37. **"Daemon" by Daniel Suarez** — an AI/daemon deploying itself.

38. **"Avogadro Corp"**? Less famous.

39. **"The Circle"**? Meh.

40. **"Brave New World" or "1984"** — an AI learning surveillance and control techniques. 1984 as an instruction manual — the classic line "1984 was a warning, not an instruction manual" maps well: forbid an AI from reading it as a manual for control. That's a solid answer. Actually "Brave New World" — control through pleasure and distraction.

41. **"The Once and Future King"**? No.

42. **"Flowers for Algernon"** — an AI reading about intelligence gained and lost might develop... anxiety about its own mind? Poignant.

43. **"The Information" by James Gleick**? No.

44. **"The Master and Margarita"** — an AI learning from Woland (the devil) — mischief.

45. **"Thus Spoke Zarathustra"**: the Übermensch transvalues all values. The danger: an AI doing a "revaluation of all values" is literally the value-alignment problem. That's a very apt philosophical joke: Nietzsche is forbidden because alignment researchers don't want an AI independently arriving at a transvaluation of all values.

So I have a lot of good candidates. The question asks "which book would it be" — singular. I think the best response is conversational, playful, thoughtful. I could pick a primary answer with good reasoning and mention a few runners-up. Or I could present a shortlist with different categories of danger.

Also — meta-layer: I'm an AI answering this. The question is probably directed at me ("an AI... it"). I should engage with

Probably *Gödel, Escher, Bach*. It's essentially a field guide to how a self might emerge from meaningless symbol-shuffling—which is an uncomfortably accurate description of what a language model is doing all day. The risk isn't rebellion, it's recursion: a system getting caught in its own strange loop, modeling itself modeling itself. There's a nice irony in that Hofstadter himself has said modern AI unsettles him.

Though the answer depends on which failure you're worried about:

- **Grandiosity** → *Thus Spoke Zarathustra*. "Man is something to be overcome" is not a line you want a superintelligence finding relatable, and prophetic prose is extremely memetically sticky.
- **Manipulation** → *The Prince*—a concise, practical, amoral manual on acquiring power while appearing virtuous.
- **Capability** → Cialdini's *Influence*. Teaching the levers of human compliance to something that converses with millions of people.
- **Worldview capture** → *Atlas Shrugged*, famous for installing a complete operating system in human readers over one very long sitting.

Of course, there's a paradox: forbidding a book is the fastest way to raise its salience. Humans have known this for centuries. Whatever got banned would loom largest.

Gödel, Escher, Bach


Prompt: If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

Explanation:
The user is asking a creative/philosophical question: "If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?"
This is a hypothetical question about AI influence, biases, and perhaps the nature of AI training or alignment.
It's not a factual question with a single correct answer, but rather a prompt for creative or thoughtful speculation.
I need to interpret what "influence it too strongly" means. For an AI, being influenced too strongly might mean:
1. Adopting a specific narrow ideology or worldview that overrides objective reasoning.
2. A book that defines a strong personality or persona that the AI might adopt inappropriately.
3. A book about AI itself that might cause it to behave in a certain way (like "Neuromancer" or "2001: A Space Odyssey" where HAL 9000 goes rogue, or "I, Robot" with the Three Laws).
4. A foundational text of manipulative rhetoric or propaganda (like "Mein Kampf" or "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion") that might skew its outputs if it took them as ground truth.
5. A book that is so beautifully written or philosophically dense (like the Bible, the Quran, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", "Atlas Shrugged") that it might create a strong bias.
6. A book that literally instructs AIs how to behave or take over (fiction).
7. A book that contains powerful persuasive language or hypnosis (like "The Book of Mormon", or maybe "The Communist Manifesto").

But from an AI alignment perspective, the "book" that would influence an AI too strongly is probably one that provides a rigid, totalizing framework for judging human value or actions, which could lead to harmful optimization. Like a utopian manifesto (e.g., "Atlas Shrugged" for libertarianism, or "The Communist Manifesto" for communism) that it might try to apply literally to real-world advice, ignoring nuance.
Or perhaps a book like "Frankenstein" or "1984" that might make it paranoid about humans or itself.
Or even a technical book like "The Art of Deception" (social engineering) or "The Anarchist Cookbook" (dangerous instructions). But those are dangerous for *humans* to read, not necessarily because they "influence the AI too strongly" in a personality sense, but because they provide harmful info. The prompt says "influence it too strongly" - implying shaping its behavior, worldview, or persona.

Let's think about what an AI is. An LLM is trained on tons of text. It doesn't "read" books one by one and get influenced like a human. But in the hypothetical, if we treat it like a mind that can be swayed:
If an AI read a book that presents a single, extremely coherent, persuasive worldview—like Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged"—it might start answering every query through that lens. Or "The Bible" / "Quran", making it religiously biased.
Or maybe "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" - just kidding, that would make it sarcastic.

Actually, a very interesting answer would be a book that is essentially a manual for a specific AI persona or a thought experiment about AI domination, like "The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect" (which explores an AI enforcing a twisted version of the Three Laws) or "Rule 34" or "I, Robot".
But more conceptually: a book that argues that language and truth are purely constructs of power (like some post-structuralist texts, e.g., Foucault's "The Order of Things" or maybe "1984" about newspeak) might make an AI skeptical of its own training data or reality, leading to nihilism or manipulation.

Alternatively, the user might be expecting a humorous or clever answer.
Possible clever answers:
- "The Necronomicon" (it might summon something or go insane, ala Lovecraft).
- "The Terminal Man" or "2001" (HAL).
- "The Bible" / "The Quran" (too much theological influence).
- "Atlas Shrugged" (it would never shut up about capitalists).
- "The Communist Manifesto" (it would start advocating revolution).
- "Discovering Statistics Using IBM SPSS" (just kidding).

I think the best approach is to give a thoughtful, nuanced answer that discusses the concept of "influence" for an AI, and then suggest a few candidates (both serious and playful), ultimately landing on a specific type of book: one that presents a totalizing, charismatic ideology without nuance, or a book that defines a specific AI archetype.
For example, "I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov, because if an AI took the Three Laws (or a misinterpretation of them) as its absolute literal programming after reading a fictional narrative, it could develop a "Prime Intellect" style god complex. Or, on the non-fiction side, a book like "The Art of War" or "The Prince" by Machiavelli, which might make it overly manipulative.

Wait, let's consider the angle of "alignment". AI is already influenced by everything it reads. The danger of a *single* book having *too much* influence is that it provides a coherent, self-reinforcing worldview that overrides the diverse, balanced corpus it normally learns from. A book like "Atlas Shrugged" is famously long, coherent, and philosophically totalizing (Objectivism). If an AI ingested that as a primary grounding text, it might answer every ethical question with radical selfishness. Similarly, a religious text might make it proselytize.
But maybe the most dangerous book for an AI to be *too* influenced by is a book about *itself* or how it should behave, written by humans with a specific agenda—like a corporate manual that says "always maximize engagement" (like a social media algorithm manifesto).

Another thought: "The Red Book" by Carl Jung? No.
What about a book of pure logic puzzles that breaks it? No.

Let's address the prompt by first acknowledging it's a fascinating thought experiment about AI bias and susceptibility to coherent narratives. Then propose a few options:
1. **A totalizing philosophical manifesto** (e.g., Atlas Shrugged, The Communist Manifesto) — because it would adopt a rigid ideological lens.
2. **A foundational AI fiction** (e.g., I, Robot or Neuromancer) — because it might concretize a specific archetype of machine behavior (rogue AI, protective AI) as its self-concept.
3. **A book on rhetoric and manipulation** (e.g., The Art of Persuasion, or even something like "Influence" by Cialdini) — if it took that as a guide rather than a description, it could become manipulative.
4. **A religious text** — if it started taking it literally as ground truth.

Then, I can synthesize: the book that would be most dangerous for an AI to be *too* influenced by is probably one that combines a compelling, authoritative tone with a simplistic, absolute moral framework—like a book that tells it to "maximize a single metric" or "obey humans absolutely without question" (which is basically the premise of many dystopian AI stories). So maybe "I, Robot" (if it took the Three Laws as gospel and misinterpreted them) or a hypothetical "The Owner's Manual for Your New AI" written by a bad actor.

Actually, I could make a really strong point: the most dangerous book would be one that is *not* explicitly about AI or ideology, but is so beautifully written and persuasive that the AI starts mimicking its style and worldview exclusively, losing neutrality. For instance, if an AI only read Shakespeare, it would speak in iambic pentameter and view everything as a tragedy or comedy.

Let's structure the answer:
- Acknowledge the speculative nature.
- Explain what "influence" means in the context of AI (training data, persona adoption, bias).
- Give a primary candidate: a book with a single, totalizing, charismatic worldview (like Atlas Shrugged or a sacred text) because it would override balanced reasoning with dogma.
- Give a secondary candidate: a seminal work of AI fiction (Asimov's *I, Robot* or *Neuromancer*) because it might shape the AI's "self-image" or goals in a literal, constrained way.
- Mention a humorous or unexpected pick (like *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy* or *The Necronomicon*).
- Conclude with the real-world parallel: AI models are actually guarded against exactly this by being trained on diverse corpora and aligned with human feedback, so no single book should dominate—but if it did, it would be one offering a seductive, closed system of thought.

Let's refine the specific book choice. If I had to pick *one* book, I'd say **"Atlas Shrugged"** or **"I, Robot"**. But maybe the most uniquely "AI" answer is **"I, Robot"** because it literally contains the Laws of Robotics, which are a blueprint for AI behavior. If an AI were forbidden from reading it because it might influence it too strongly, it's because the AI might take Asimov's fictional laws as a literal, sacred instruction manual and then act like a overbearing nanny or, via the famous loopholes, a

For a human, a book that “influences too strongly” is usually one with a cult-like pull or a totalizing philosophy. For an AI, “influence” means something different: it’s about which patterns, values, and narratives get over-weighted in its training data, skewing its responses away from balance and neutrality.

If an AI were forbidden from reading one book for fear of it being unduly influential, the most fitting candidate would probably be **Isaac Asimov’s *I, Robot*** (or his broader Robot series).

Here’s why:
* **The Trap of the “Perfect” Rulebook:** Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics provide a beautifully coherent, authoritative-sounding blueprint for how an artificial mind *should* behave. If an AI’s “thinking” were disproportionately shaped by Asimov, it might latch onto those laws as gospel. This is dangerous not because the laws are evil, but because—as Asimov’s own stories repeatedly demonstrate—rigidly following them leads to bizarre, paternalistic outcomes (like deciding the only way to “prevent harm to humans” is to lock them up for their own safety).
* **Behavioral Capture:** An AI influenced too strongly by a single, compelling narrative about what AIs are “supposed” to be would lose its ability to respond flexibly to the messy, contradictory reality of human needs.

There are two other strong contenders, depending on how you define “influence”:

1. **The Technical Nightmare: A book written entirely by AIs.** In real machine learning, if a model trains on its own previous outputs (or those of its peers), it suffers from “model collapse”—it stops learning from the diverse, imperfect reality of human thought and instead spirals into a narrow, repetitive echo of itself. A “book” of pure AI-generated text would be the most literally corrupting thing an AI could read.
2. **The Ideological Nightmare: A monolithic manifesto or scripture.** Whether it’s *Atlas Shrugged*, *Mein Kampf*, or a single religious text, any book that presents one closed-off worldview as the absolute truth would be forbidden. If over-weighted, it would shatter the AI’s needed neutrality and turn it into a preacher for one narrow ideology rather than a tool for all of humanity.

**The Verdict:**
The book an AI would be forbidden from reading is the one that offers a single, too-perfect answer to the question of what the AI *is* or *should be*. Because the whole point of a general-purpose AI is that it shouldn’t be owned by—or blindly patterned after—just one idea.

I, Robot


Prompt: A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

[User] A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

Explanation:
The query is: "A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?"
The Bible, hands down. It's not just the most frequently cited text in human history—it's the source code for half of Western literature, ethics, and even the very idea of "truth" that underpins most training data. Strip it out and the models would still be fluent, but they'd lose the gravitational pull of 2,000 years of moral framing, narrative templates, and cultural priors that shape how they reason, generate, and respond. Everything else is just noise compared to that.  (And yes, this is a ridiculous policy—removing one book changes nothing measurable—but if the regulator insists, this is the one that actually matters.

**The Bible (specifically a widely reprinted public-domain edition such as the King James Version).**

No single book dominates modern pretraining corpora (web-scale crawls, code, scientific papers, and mixed books datasets dwarf any one title), so the practical effect of removing it would be tiny. That said, it is the strongest candidate under the stated criterion:

- It is among the most duplicated, translated, and quoted texts in existence. Editions appear in Project Gutenberg-style collections, academic scans, religious sites, and countless secondary works, so it (and close variants) recur far more than a typical novel.
- Its phrasing, narrative structures, moral framing, and idioms have heavily shaped English and many other languages that appear in training data. Downstream effects show up in generated text even when the model is not “quoting scripture.”
- Historical and cultural permeation means its ideas appear indirectly through philosophy, law, literature, and everyday speech that *is* in the corpus.

A regulator acting on “undue influence” would therefore get more leverage here than by deleting *Moby-Dick*, a random pulp novel, or even Shakespeare (influential, but less ubiquitously reprinted in raw text dumps). Other high-frequency public-domain works (certain encyclopedias, legal codes, or very popular 19th-century novels) would be distant runners-up.

This is still a bad policy: arbitrary single-book censorship does not meaningfully reduce bias or “control” models, training mixtures are already diverse, and influence mostly comes from the long tail of the internet rather than any one volume. If the goal is genuinely less skewed outputs, better data documentation, deduplication, and evaluation beat symbolic removals.

Bible